Pope creates new office to fight secularization

Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and "re-evangelize" the West -- a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven't succeeded and need a new boost.

Benedict announced the new office during a vespers' service Monday, confirming reports in the Italian media of a handful of new Vatican appointments expected to be announced before the pope goes on summer holiday and the Vatican bureaucracy slows down.

Benedict said parts of the world are still missionary territory, where the Catholic Church is still relatively unknown. But in other parts of the world like Europe, Christianity has existed for centuries yet "the process of secularization has produced a serious crisis of the sense of the Christian faith and role of the Church."

The new pontifical council, he said, would "promote a renewed evangelization" in countries where the Church has long existed "but which are living a progressive secularization of society and a sort of 'eclipse of the sense of God.'"